The orgasm builds from a hot, concentrated point and spreads outward until my thighs are shaking against his shoulders. I come with my fist pressed against my mouth and his name caught somewhere behind my teeth. The intensity of it pulls a sound from me that I can’t fully muffle, and he grunts in approval.
After easing me down from the peak, he stands and moves over me, and the question is in his expression before he asks it. Do I want to continue? I could stop here. I could straighten my dress, catch my breath, and walk back onto the floor with one orgasm and my professional dignity mostly intact. That would be the smart move. That would be what Marisol would tell me to do since it’s too late to take her better advice of not doing this at all.
Holding his gaze, I whisper, “Don’t stop.”
He lifts me, wrapping my legs around his waist, and sets me on the arm of the couch. I push his pants down. He brings a hand between us to guide his cock until it’s in the right position, pressed against my entrance, slick and hot.
I grip his shoulders harder. Before he can move, I pull his cock inside my sheath.
He sinks inside with one slow thrust, and the stretch draws a sound from both of us that we muffle against each other’s mouths. He fills me completely, and for two full seconds, neither of us moves. A server’s heels click past the door reminds me of the absurdity of where we are, what I’m doing, and howthoroughly I’ve detonated my own boundaries. That makes me laugh against his neck.
“Something funny?” He pulls back an inch, and the movement makes me gasp.
I shake my head while shrugging. “Everything about this is insane.”
“I know.” He starts to move slowly, plunging deeply before almost withdrawing to repeat the motion. The laughter dies in my throat.
I grip the back of his neck while the room narrows to the point where our bodies connect. Each stroke hits exactly right, and I arch against him, pulling his cock deeper with my heels pressed against his lower back. The couch shifts beneath us.
I should be terrified. I should be calculating the risk, measuring the fallout, and running the same cost-benefit analysis I run before every decision I make. Instead, I’m choosing this. Every second, every thrust, and every sound I let him pull from me is a decision I’m making with my eyes open, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.
I come a second time with him still moving inside me, and my pussy tightening around his shaft makes him groan against my shoulder. It takes three more thrusts, harder than the rest, before he follows. His cock pulses inside me as he finishes, and I hold on to him through it, my arms around his neck and my face pressed against his hair. He grips my hips hard enough that I’ll have marks tomorrow, but I don’t care.
We stay connected for several seconds, both breathing hard. He rests his forehead against my shoulder, and I keep my fingers in his hair. The room smells like sex, whiskey, and expensiveleather. The music from the club bleeds through the wall, muffled but persistent, and a reminder my shift isn’t over.
Two hundred people are out there while I sit here with his cum still warm inside me and my entire night broken in half. My whole life, for that matter, is now Before Adrian and After Adrian. That sounds overly dramatic even to me, but it feels apt.
He lifts his head and looks at me. The control is back in his expression, but his eyes haven’t caught up. They’re dark and unguarded, and for a second, I see awareness. This is trouble, and he knows it, but he’s not going to do a single thing about it.
I ease fully away but slowly. “I should go back to the floor.”
He nods. He helps me straighten my dress, hands me my underwear without comment, and watches me pull myself together. I check my reflection in the dark window. My hair needs smoothing, and my lips are swollen, but the dress is intact. Surprisingly, my expression suggests I’m in full control. It’s a lie, but I’m not forthcoming with my actual state right now.
I leave the private room first, smoothing my dress one more time in the corridor while taking a breath, before stepping back onto the floor. Nobody looks up or notices. I resume my rounds like nothing happened, adjusting a table arrangement, redirecting a server, and confirming a bottle order.
My hands are shaking. I keep them at my sides or wrapped around tablets and bottle necks, where the trembling doesn’t show. Adrian and his companion enter the corridor leading to Dominic’s office a few minutes later. I can feel his gaze on me briefly, but I’m turned away, and I don’t look back at him. I’m not ignoring him, because that clearly doesn’t work. I’m just buying more time to compose myself.
6
ADRIAN
Istay in the private room for three minutes after Aurora leaves. I button my shirt, buckle my belt, and finish the whiskey I poured two hours ago and never touched. It’s warm, but I drink it anyway because I need something to do with my hands besides remember what they were doing ten minutes ago.
I can still smell her on my skin. That’s the problem. I force my focus back to the room, the evening’s remaining business, and the intelligence Viktor is probably waiting to deliver downstairs. The distraction is a liability. I correct it.
Except I don’t. I’m standing at a window staring at my own reflection, and what I should be doing is assessing the exposure and the risk. What I’m actually thinking about is how she pulled me closer instead of pushing me away at every point where a different woman would have stopped. Aurora Moore knows exactly what she did.
My mother would be furious. Viktor will be insufferable. I note both thoughts and move on. I straighten my jacket, check my reflection, and leave the private room.
Viktor is at table one nursing a club soda. He takes one look at me as I sit down, and his face moves from recognition to assessment to something close to resignation. “You look like you just made a decision you can’t take back.”
“We’re not discussing it.”
“I wasn’t going to discuss it. I was going to point out that mixing attraction with business means business stops being efficient.” He takes a sip of his club soda and sets it down precisely in the center of its coaster. “I suspected as much, which is why I didn’t interrupt yourmeeting.”
I give him a look that should end the sentence. He ignores the look but drops that touchy subject. Instead, he introduces something worse.
“Grigor flagged something forty minutes ago.” He slides his phone across the table. “I would have pulled you out of that room, but the information needed verification, and you were clearly occupied.”
